Omer Akram: 

I believe that one should encourage people who are helping to solve/trying to help with, problems with FOSS. Since neither you nor other members of the Gwibber team have seen fit to *acknowledge*, let alone thank the patch contributor in this bug, I have taken the liberty of congratulating someone who is eager and trying to help sort out Gwibber problems, *despite* the fact that I no longer use it. (Ha! There's irony for you! A Gwibber team member doesn't care to thank contributors, but a non-user cares!)

There have been other patches beside this one. Those have had (AFAIK) the same lack of overt response from the team. How much encouragement or positive feedback have you, or any of the Gwibber team, given people who are trying to help out with the effort? As I write this, it is 40 days since I filed bug #574979, trying to help the Gwibber dev team by focusing attention on a bug that was hiding other bugs -- once solved, it would enable users to make USEFUL contributions in their bug reports (with meaningful stack traces in at least one tiny area of the vast project), instead of posting bug reports with erroneous stack traces.

I am not privy to the inner communications of the Gwibber team, so I do not know if that bug has had any effect at all. What I DO note is that there has been ZERO feedback, negative or otherwise, on that bug. And, since (as you have noted), I have stopped using Gwibber, I no longer look at the source code to see if the devs have fixed the issue. Many other projects' developers actually communicate on bug reports, even if it's a terse 'fixed in ver. x.y.z'. On the Gwibber bug reports that I'm subscribed to, I have seen zero such communications, which makes me feel that the Gwibber team doesn't even care about bug reports. I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling.

I didn't expect instantaneous feedback to my bug (no. cited above). Nor, until you now gratuitously labeled my comments as "spam", did I mention the lack of attention. I understand that FOSS developers are busy people, and have multiple priorities, and moreover, that no user can *demand* attention to a particular bug or issue. That's fine; I respect the commitment and work of FOSS developers, including those working on Gwibber. However, if all the bug reports people make are (seemingly) ignored, then pray tell me what is the benefit of this system? If the bug reports are not being used for the purpose they were meant - interaction between developers and users in identifying and FIXING flaws in the code - then what is the use? And why may the bug-report comment system not be used by a non-Gwibber-user to praise the effort of other people in trying to help solve problems in Gwibber (even if it is ignored by the Gwibber team)??

I appreciate that you, Omer Akram, seem to be doing useful and good work related to Gwibber. However, despite your being a member of the Gwibber team, I see no evidence that you have brought relevant, possibly useful, patches and bugs to the notice of the developers. Maybe the Gwibber devs know all, and don't need bug reports? If so, it might save a lot of people's time if this is just made known to users. The attitude has frustrated, and is frustrating, a lot of people. Perhaps no one cares because "it all works in the en_US locale, which is the big target market for the distro..."?? And other countries don't matter...?? Whatever the reason, the attitude that is coming across to a lot of people is NOT positive!

Instead of labeling people's comments as "spam", perhaps it would be helpful for you, and the team, to sit back and realize the impression of you that is coming across to the world. The world of potential users, potential contributors... the world of people who probably soon realize that filing bugs on Gwibber seems like a waste of time because there is apparently no response from the developers, the people who MATTER. I entreat you, Gwibber team: examine your priorities, and see if you can spare some time to interact with your users, who have problems - because if not, like me, they will go away and look for another option. The joke is that people moan about low FOSS adoption rates... if the perceived attitude is actually the attitude of the dev team, I am not surprised that users walk away from such projects, and sometimes, from FOSS in general!

I have had my say, and done my best to be civil and cordial throughout, despite the obvious frustration that I have experienced in this regard. If you, or anyone, feel that I have violated some rule of the Ubuntu code of conduct, then please go ahead and terminate my account. If the treatment that is meted out to new contributors (who are doing what the Gwibber team should have done, in thanking/interacting with contributors), is to label their comments as 'spam'... then there isn't much use remaining a member here.

Thank you,
Ed S.